Film review: Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

This should have been great.  An interesting premise (based on a real myth (not an oxymoron)) - that the actor who played the original Nosferatu, Max Schreck, was in fact a real vampire - a great cast (John Malkovich! Willem Dafoe!  Eddie Izzard! Cary Elwes!), and for the first half or so it definitely had potential.  But Malkovich is strangely disappointing (rather one-note) and once Eddie Izzard disappears about halfway (presumably he's killed by the vampire, as so many of the film crew are), the film goes rather dreary (although Cary Elwes, who is a replacement cameraman to take over for Schreck's first victim, does his best to elevate matters).  The trouble is, I don't think they decided on what it was.  Occasionally that's okay - films like American Werewolf in London manage to switch gears smoothly and be successfully scary, romantic, funny and then tragic, but this one doesn't pull it off.  Part of it is that Malkovich's Murnau (the director) is both opaque and unlikable.  He sacrifices the lives of his crew and in particular, his star actress, to capture "Schreck" (who is actually Count Orlock, the name of the vampire in Nosferatu, on celluloid.  To be fair, it looks like he had a plan to avoid giving up Greta (it involved a big chain-operated sliding door that would let the daylight in to destroy Orlock before he got to chomp down on Greta), but Orlock outwitted him and sabotaged it, so in the end, just about everybody except Murnau ends up dead.  And Murnau just doesn't seem that bothered.  So is it worth watching?  Well, Eddie Izzard is fun, but it's almost impossible to watch him and not be reminded of bits from his standup.  But mainly Willem Dafoe is amazing (as always) as Schreck.  So if you're a Dafoe-head (which is a thing I just invented), you have to see it.